Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. The Nile had overflowed its bed. The luxuriant corn-fields and blooming gardens on its shores were lost beneath a boundless waste of waters; and only the gigantic temples and palaces of its cities, (protected from the force of the water by dikes), and the tops of the tall palm-trees and acacias could be seen above its surface. The branches of the sycamores and plane-trees drooped and floated... more...

A VOICE ON THE WINDShe walks with the wind on the windy heightWhen the rocks are loud and the waves are white,And all night long she calls through the night,"O, my children, come home!"Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,Tosses around her like a shroud,While over the deep her voice rings loud,—"O, my children, come home, come home!O, my children, come home!"Who is she who wanders... more...

Introduction. i. Introduction There are two great rivers of Europe which, in their course, offer a not uninstructive analogy to the Church of God. The Rhine and the Rhone both take their rise from mountain glaciers, and for the first hundred or hundred and fifty miles from their sources they run turbid as glacier streams always are, and for the most part turbulent as mountain torrents. Then they enter... more...

INTRODUCTION. Twelve hundred years ago a Chinese historian stated that "on the eastern frontier of the land of Japan there is a barrier of great mountains, beyond which is the land of the Hairy Men." These were the Aino, so named from the word in their own language signifying "man." Over most of the country of these rude and helpless indigenes the Japanese have long since spread, only a... more...

CHAPTER 1. The mountains forming the range of Alps which border on the north-eastern confines of Italy, were, in the autumn of the year 408, already furrowed in numerous directions by the tracks of the invading forces of those northern nations generally comprised under the appellation of Goths. In some places these tracks were denoted on either side by fallen trees, and occasionally assumed, when half... more...

he old one said, "Stick close by me, child." "What'll it be like, Grandpa?" The youngster was frightened. "Dark, very dark, and big. It moves fast, but we'll keep up with it." The tone was consciously reassuring. "Dark, Grandpa?" "Yes, it sucks heat and absorbs light. You'll find out when you're old and strong enough to swim down to the bottom and... more...

INTRODUCTION. I VISITED Naples in the year 1818. On the 8th of December of that year, my companion and I crossed the Bay, to visit the antiquities which are scattered on the shores of Baiae. The translucent and shining waters of the calm sea covered fragments of old Roman villas, which were interlaced by sea-weed, and received diamond tints from the chequering of the sun-beams; the blue and pellucid... more...

I There were eight of us in the room, and we were discussing contemporary matters and persons, "I do not understand these gentlemen!" remarked A.—"They are fellows of a reckless sort…. Really, desperate…. There has never been anything of the kind before." "Yes, there has," put in P., a grey-haired old man, who had been born about the twenties of the present... more...

How far the term, "A Leveller," is provincial, or confined to the Borders, I am not certain; for before I had left them, to become as a pilgrim on the earth, the phrase had fallen into disuse, and the events, or rather the cause which brought it into existence, had passed away. But, twenty-five or even twenty years ago, in these parts, there was no epithet more familiar to the lips of every... more...

Honore de Balzac is known to the world in general as a novel-writer, a producer of romances, in which begin the reign of realism in French fiction. His Comedie Humaine is a description of French society, as it existed from the time of the Revolution to that of the Restoration. In this series of stories we find the author engaged in analyzing the manners, motives and external life of the French man and... more...